Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Video games need more girls?

Blah blah blah. More complaints that the sexist video game industry drives away female players and programmers. Tired old complaints dredged up by tired but recent controversy.

Yeah, the video game industry is largely sexist. A great number females in games are scantily clad, and if you ever go to E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), the largest video game show in the country, you'd even see that real scantily clad women are used en masse to sell these games.

Sell? Oh yeah, that's right . . . sex sells.

It's not new news. People have understood that sex sells for a very, very long time. And yet we see that many of the industries where sex appeal (mainly from sexy/sensual/seductive/scantily clad females) is used to push things, such as movies, magazines, advertising, television, etc., there is a great number of women attempting to be a part of that field. And yet there is a scarcity of women in video games, both as employees and as customers.

Have they considered that maybe the medium is important here?

I mean, seriously, let's find out how many women work, comparatively, in the computer industry in general. I'll bet you discover that it's painfully low there, too. Women, for sociological reasons I probably don't understand, shy away from the computer industry. They don't avoid making or playing video games because they're sexist . . . they avoid these things because they are video games.

At least, that's the explanation that makes the most sense to me. The evidence seems to suggest it. And when sex stops selling, or more women are involved in the industry, then maybe the video game industry will clean up its act a bit more. Until then . . .

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